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06-Nov-2009, 17:22
| | Member | | Join Date: Aug 2009 Country: Canada
Posts: 175
Current Location: Switzerland First Language: English Member Type: Student or Learner | | comma Should there be a comma after "1997"? Sports federations lobbied for the creation of a legal base that would limit the application of EC law to sport and protect sport’s autonomous structures. Their efforts seemed to bear fruit, as the Parliament adopted a report on sport in May 1997, in which it (among other things) emphasized that the EU had to recognize the specific nature of sport and the autonomy of the sports movement, and called for the inclusion of a reference to sport in the EC Treaty.
Thanks. | 
06-Nov-2009, 17:30
|  | Junior Member | | Join Date: Jul 2009 Country: Germany
Posts: 99
Current Location: Germany First Language: German Member Type: Student or Learner | | Re: comma I would use the comma because this part is an embedded sentence.
(Eingeschobener Nebensatz =) )
Cheers! | 
06-Nov-2009, 18:12
| | Editor, UsingEnglish.com | | Join Date: Nov 2002 Country: UK
Posts: 27,067
Current Location: Phnom Penh First Language: English Member Type: English Teacher | | Re: comma Who did the emphasising? From the sentence, it seems logical to me that the emphasis is in the report, so I would change it to a report, which emphasised or a report, in which it was emphasised (though I find this one a bit cumbersome). If the emphasis came from the parliament then I'd use adopted... and emphasised.
PS This assumes that there was only one report on sport that month. | 
06-Nov-2009, 18:12
| | Editor, UsingEnglish.com | | Join Date: Nov 2002 Country: UK
Posts: 27,067
Current Location: Phnom Penh First Language: English Member Type: English Teacher | | Re: comma Who did the emphasising? From the sentence, it seems logical to me that the emphasis is in the report, so I would change it to a report, which emphasised or a report, in which it was emphasised (though I find this one a bit cumbersome). If the emphasis came from the parliament then I'd use adopted... and emphasised.
PS This assumes that there was only one report on sport that month. | 
06-Nov-2009, 21:14
| | Member | | Join Date: Aug 2009 Country: Canada
Posts: 175
Current Location: Switzerland First Language: English Member Type: Student or Learner | | Re: comma I think it's pretty obvious that the Parliament did the emphasizing, not the report, although it doesn't really make much of a difference. The Parliament used the term "emphasize" in the report when talking about the need to recognize the specific nature of sport and... | 
06-Nov-2009, 23:02
|  | Moderator | | Join Date: Mar 2007 Country: USA
Posts: 3,358
Current Location: Pennsylvania, USA First Language: English (American) Member Type: Other | | Re: comma I don't agree. I think the report emphasized, not Parliament.
(And no, no comma if you write it this way.)
Their efforts seemed to bear fruit, as the Parliament adopted a report on sport in May 1997 in which it (among other things) emphasized that
this means in was the report in which it was emphasized that...
If you want to say that Parliament emphasized, then it would have to be something like this:
Their efforts seemed to bear fruit, as the Parliament adopted a report on sport in May 1997, an action that emphasized (among other things) that
__________________ I'm not a teacher, but I write for a living. Please don't ask me about 2nd conditionals, but I'm a safe bet for what reads well in (American) English. | 
06-Nov-2009, 23:44
| | Member | | Join Date: Aug 2009 Country: Canada
Posts: 175
Current Location: Switzerland First Language: English Member Type: Student or Learner | | Re: comma The sentence would not make sense if "it" were the report.
The Parliament adopted a report in which the report emphasized that...
The Parliament adopted a report in which it (the Parliament) emphasized that... | 
07-Nov-2009, 00:32
|  | Moderator | | Join Date: Mar 2007 Country: USA
Posts: 3,358
Current Location: Pennsylvania, USA First Language: English (American) Member Type: Other | | Re: comma I'm sorry, but I entirely disagree. If Parliament WROTE the report, then fine. They adopted someone else's report.
I'm clearly not going to convince you, and since I can't understand your sentence to mean it they way you do, then my opinion on the comma is also irrelevant.
__________________ I'm not a teacher, but I write for a living. Please don't ask me about 2nd conditionals, but I'm a safe bet for what reads well in (American) English. | 
07-Nov-2009, 01:04
| | Member | | Join Date: Aug 2009 Country: Canada
Posts: 175
Current Location: Switzerland First Language: English Member Type: Student or Learner | | Re: comma A parliamentarian wrote the report, and the parliament then adopted it. | 
07-Nov-2009, 01:15
|  | Moderator | | Join Date: Mar 2007 Country: USA
Posts: 3,358
Current Location: Pennsylvania, USA First Language: English (American) Member Type: Other | | Re: comma If Parliament wrote it, it's another story. That would have been useful to have known.
__________________ I'm not a teacher, but I write for a living. Please don't ask me about 2nd conditionals, but I'm a safe bet for what reads well in (American) English. |  | | | Thread Tools | | | | Display Modes | Linear Mode |
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